It is important that public-safety responders have an adequate link to communication services (e.g., telephony, data services, and the like) when responding to an incident. However, the reality of the dynamic and mobile nature of the profession is that, in many instances, incidents occur outside of the range or coverage of the established radio access networks (RANs). In other cases, the available RAN signal may not have enough capacity to support the required public-safety mission. To facilitate communication between the responders and offsite utilities, incident area networks (IANs) are often set up using mobile base stations. These mobile base stations establish a link between a given wireless-communication device (WCD) (e.g., a handheld mobile radio) and a given network resource, typically using some standard for over-the-air communication, an example of which is 3GPP's Long Term Evolution (LTE), which is one example protocol for a type of wireless communication known as orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) communication. In addition to mobile radios, some examples of commonly used WCDs include cell phones, smartphones, dongles, tablets, notebook computers, laptop computers, and the like. And certainly many other examples of WCDs could be listed as well, as known to those having skill in the relevant art.
It is desirable for public-safety responders to be able to communicate with one another as efficiently as possible for at least the reason that the immediacy and efficacy with which public-safety responders can communicate with one another are quite often determinative of a positive outcome in public-safety incidents. For the sake of general efficiency and for optimized allocation of network resources, it is important that mobile base stations be coordinated with existing communication networks. Accordingly, for this reason and others, there is a need for methods and systems for automated activation and configuration of broadband IANs.
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The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.